Here is a rock song about lust and loyalty I wrote and recorded around 2005. Enjoy, like on YouTube, and share!
Well, here we are again! Another episode of Thoughts of Leith. This time, I discuss accessing scientific research, my publishing efforts, and some things I bought.
I occasionally post lyrics videos for songs I’ve written. This is a pop-rock song from a few years ago, including Spanish and Arabic lyrics. I hope you enjoy and share!
I promised fewer unboxing videos, but this one was impossible to pass up because my brother sent me a surprise!
I love doing these unboxing videos, because it’s always an opportunity to share things I like and talk bout how they speak to my general views of life. Today’s unboxing is a double punch of a book and home decor. Also, Stannis corrects my grammar.
On the Two Johns science fiction podcast #12, a Science Facts episode, John Austin and I were discussing the axial tilt of Uranus. I brought up the proposal I had made to rename the poorly named seventh planet in honor of Minerva. Why?
- In English, the most common language for science, both of the pronunciations of Uranus sound obscene.
- Uranus, being the god of the entire sky, is absurd as the patron of a single planet.
- The other planets in the solar system were named for Roman gods. Uranus is merely the Latinized name of a Greek deity.
- In Greek myth, Uranus was a primordial deity far removed from the other gods who have given their names to planets in our solar system.
- There is an asteroid named Minerva in orbital association with the asteroids Aegis and Gorgoneion, but these other two names are Greek names for things associated with Athena. The asteroid should be renamed Athena, freeing up the Latin name Minerva.
- The names of major planets are dominated by gods. Venus is the only major planet named for a goddess. Let’s have another.
- In contrast to triumphant Mars, Minerva was often depicted with her sword lowered in sympathy for the dead. This matches nicely to the planet’s tilted axis of rotation.
Well, John took this proposal to heart and started an online petition. Please add your name to it, share the petition with others, and get our Lady of Wisdom a planet!
While I’m waiting for support to continue the dystopian, neuropunk novel Nodular, I’ve been working on a scifi novel that I don’t have a genre for. Like McCaffrey’s The Dragonriders of Pern, it’s a science fiction tale couched in fantasy tropes, but the term “science fantasy” implies the opposite: a fantasy story couched in scifi tropes. Like Pern, the world of The Heir of Annihilation, Kampania, is a false fantasy, a scifi setting in which the characters experience the world in a typical fantasy setting way.
In Heir, the people of Laramidia live a simple life fishing off the coast of the Thalassic Ocean, insulated from the politics of the Inner Seas to the east. Bram Swanjamin is the son of a fishing captain and a feather worker, but he’s apprenticed to a wandering sage who teaches him the knowledge brought to Kampania from the First World. After a catastrophic fishing trip with on his father’s boat, Bram is adrift and awaiting his mentor to return from his traveling in the east.
Check out The Heir of Annihilation.
It’s early. It’s Monday. My brain is working on about three hours sleep. Enjoy your damned meme.
I was watching episode 454 of the Your Mom’s House podcast, with Tom Segura and Christina Pazsinzky, in which was a segment where they were confused and, rightly, suspicious about someone watching comedy specials with the subtitles on. As someone who always keeps the subtitles on whenever they’re available, I thought I might have a unique fan perspective on this, even though I sympathize with their professional concerns.
Normally, I just unbox and ditch, but this time I actually talk a little about why I bought the book and why I like the author, whom I’ve previously discussed here.